News

In which countries are German NGOs active to fight global poverty? Until a few days ago there was no way of answering this questions. Neither could you find out whether an NGO supports agriculture or health or education projects, how large their project budgets are and how much money has already been disbursed. This has changed now! Read more »

People keep complaining that IATI data is hard to use. I have received phone calls from non-techies (like myself) who are absolutely appalled when opening an IATI XML file for the first time: "But I cannot read this!" Yes, we need better tools to use IATI. But fear not. There are people all around the world who are working on making open data generally and IATI data in particular more useful. Read more »

Aren’t you finished with OpenAid soon? I hear some friends ask. Is the open aid hype not finished soon? I hear open data researchers wonder? Is open aid not too narrow a focus I hear activists suggest? These questions are real questions from real people, not just hypothetical questions used for the sake of rhetoric. It may not surprise you, but from my point of view, the answer to these questions is “No”. Read more »

Is there anybody out there who really thinks aid transparency is not important? Are there still policy makers in Germany and other OECD countries who would publicly support aid opacity as a best practice in development cooperation. Probably not. But even five years after the international community in Accra vowedto make aid more transparent, progress is still mixed. Today, the International Campaign for Aid Transparency PublishWhatYouFund released its 2013 Aid Transparency Index and German aid organisations are certainly not the champions.

The most transparent donor in the world is the Millennium Challenge Cooperation in the US, followed by the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership to focussing on vaccines in poor countries, the British Department for International Development(DFID)and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Only these four donors are very good, when it comes to aid transparency. And out of the 67 donor agencies analysed in the Index, only five additional donors get a good rating including Canada, Sweden and the World Bank. All the 58 donors assessed have still some way to go to be transparent. 16 donors are in the "fair" category, 16 donors in the "poor" category and 26 donors in the "very poor" category. So, Germany is clearly not among the most transparent donors. But how does Germany rank then? Read more »

It has been a long time in coming. But the German government is now definitely making progress on open data in development cooperation. Last week, just in time for our national holiday, the German ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has published its second batch of open and standardised data. So, whoever is interested can now find out how much how bilateral official development aid (ODA) the ministry is currently giving to developing countries.

Not a big deal? Well, until March this year, there was no way, either for German citizens, or for citizens in recipient countries to get current information on where German aid money is spent. Read more »

So you think open data is a new hype in a few western countries? It is true that it is some so countries, particularly the UK and the US that are making big strides ahead in providing open and machine readable data to their citizens. It is also true that out of the 41 countries globally with open data initiatives only 12 are from so called developing countries. But the situation is quickly changing and more and more developing countries are recognising the value of open data. Countries like Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Peru and India are more advanced in open data than the German government. Read more »

Germany has just published its first batch of open data according to the standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The term open data refers to quantitative and qualitative data that is machine readible and openly licenced, so that third parties are able and allowed to reuse the data. There is an growing awareness among politicans, companies and civil society organisations, that open data is indeed a paradigm shift in exploiting the value of information. This is also true for development cooperation. Read more »

Some of us have been waiting a long time for this to happen. Germany has published its first set of aid information to the International Aid Transparency Initiative. At last! It is particularly good news as Germany was among the first signatories to IATI in September 2008, and the road to publication has been long. Read more »

"My CEO will tear off my head,
if I suggest to him that we implement IATI."

These were the precise words of a senior policy person of a big German NGO when I presented IATI some 18 months ago. In the past, reactions of other NGO representatives have been less drastic but still very clearly negative. But times are changing! In the last few months the OpenAid project continued the exchange with NGO representatives. There seems to be a growing willingness to talk about IATI. At the award ceremony of the PricewaterhouseCooper German Transparency Price for non-profits I was able to present IATI in the keynote and discuss with a number of CEOS and the reaction was much more positive than anticipated. Likewise at the workshop on IATI organised by VENRO and OpenAid the response by participants was overwhelmingly positive. The NGO representatives at the workshop acknowledged the value of IATI, but still worried how to make a convincing case for IATI within their organisations. So what is the business case for IATI? Why should NGOs in Germany and in other donor countries publish their data to IATI? Read more »

At last! It is done! Germany has published its plan to implement the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). In February 2011 this initiative of bilateral and multilateral donors agreed a common data standard to increase aid effectiveness. Many donors have long since published their data to the IATI registry and the implementation schedule from the German ministry for economic cooperation and development (BMZ) has been long overdue. This delay has been reflected in the negative rating of Germany in the international Aid Transparency Index in November 2012. Now, just a few days before Christmas it became public! Congratulations to BMZ and all those colleagues who worked on this! This is a very important step towards more transparency in development cooperation. The Excel sheet containing the implementation schedule may look extremely boring, but it is important in two regards: Read more »